Embodiments herein generally relate to printing devices and more particularly to a printing device and method that uses optical character recognition of bitmap images to validate print jobs.
The embodiments herein relate to how to use a printer to collect electronic image data within a document during the print process to validate each page and provide a record of key information unique for each page regardless of original print stream format.
When printing an item, electronic files that contain instructions on how to construct and print a document are sent to a printer. These instructions are interpreted by the printer and page images are composed and then used to drive the printing mechanism to image each page on the transfer media. The final printed image is therefore impacted primarily by the instructions on how it should be constructed and the performance quality of the printing mechanism and transfer process. Quality control of the printed output can be performed by manual inspection after the job has completed printed. However, this approach causes considerable expense in handling and inspection.
One embodiment herein provides a method that captures bitmapped images of pages of a print job that have been raster image processed by a digital front end of a printing device (while they are being printed by the printing device). The bitmapped images are captured from the printing device's buffer using a computerized device, potentially positioned within the printing device. The computerized device collects electronic image data from at least one predetermined area of the bitmapped images of the pages and performs optical character processing on the electronic image data to identify characters and numbers within the bitmapped images. The computerized device processes the characters and numbers into accumulated data for the pages of the print job. Then the computerized device compares the accumulated data to expected data to validate whether the print job printed correctly.
While the foregoing describes a method embodiment, a device embodiment is also presented herein. Such a printing device comprises a computerized device that captures bitmapped images of pages of a print job that have been raster image processed while being printed by the printing device. The computerized device collects electronic image data from at least one predetermined area of the bitmapped images of the pages and processes the electronic image data into accumulated data for the pages of the print job. The computerized device compares the accumulated data to expected data to validate whether said print job printed correctly.
The method and apparatus embodiments herein can produce an audit report based on the comparing process using the computerized device and output the audit report from the printing device. The processing of the electronic image data comprises performing at least one mathematical operation on the numbers using the computerized device. The collecting, processing, and comparing processes are performed on the print job by the computerized device in real time while the printing device is printing the print job. Further, the “at least one area” of the bitmapped images can be less than all of each bitmapped image, but gradually is the same area on each of the bitmapped images.
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.